Complete newbie runs into problems during the ./configure stage of installing a game

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Complete newbie runs into problems during the ./configure stage of installing a game

Hello Everyone,

Since this is my first post, I thought I ought to explain the extent of my utter newbieness (bear with me, I'll try to keep it short): A few days ago this kid I know was handing out Ubuntu 5.10 CDs, one of which I was the recipient of-- naturally curious (as my family has always used MS Windows) and suitibly impressed with the whole philosophy of GPL and such, I hooked up an old pc which had been gathering dust in our basement, and installed Ubuntu. This was this afternoon, after school.
What I'm getting at here is: I can use Windows XP easily (who can't?) but I haven't got a clue about Linux, despite having spent the past 9½ hours reading manuals, forums, ebooks, and what not.

So, here's the problem: I decided the first thing I would try out was this 'cool game' I found, Tuxracer. I read the Manual and the 'INSTALL' document I found included in Tuxracer. Things seemed to be proceeding smoothly until I got to the 'configure your system' step. I could try and explain what went wrong, but since I don't really understand, it might be more effective to just paste what happened:
-------------------
root@diamond:/home/elizabeth/tuxracer-0.61# CC=c89 CFLAGS=-02 LIBS=-lposix ./configure
loading cache ./config.cache
checking for a BSD compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
checking whether make sets ${MAKE}... no
checking for working aclocal... missing
checking for working autoconf... missing
checking for working automake... missing
checking for working autoheader... missing
checking for working makeinfo... missing
checking host system type... i686-pc-linux-gnuoldld
checking for gcc... c89
checking whether the C compiler (c89 -02 ) works... no
configure: error: installation or configuration problem: C compiler cannot create executables.
----------------------
I was looking around, and I also tried apt-get install build-essential. This however gave me the error: "Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install' with no packages (or specify a solution)."
When I tried this I got this text, and these errors:

-----------------------
root@diamond:/home/elizabeth/tuxracer-0.61# apt-get -f install
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Correcting dependencies... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
ttf-baekmuk
The following NEW packages will be installed:
ttf-baekmuk
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 71 not upgraded.
1 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0B/11.5MB of archives.
After unpacking 28.7MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y

How do you propose I should go about fixing this? And/or, if someone knows and would just tell me about a particularly good beginner's book/tutorial I would greatly appreciate that, too. So, if someone responds to this (in any way, shape, or form, really), thanks a lot!

The ./configure program is trying to see if your compiler works or not.
So you should verify first if you have this "c89" compiler.
For this, use a command like:

Code:

whereis c89

or

Code:

locate c89

If the system can't find a program called c89, then you don't have a compiler with that name.
Either install it, or change the "CC=" option you gave to ./configure to use a different compiler.
"gcc" (GNU C/C++ compiler) is most likely installed, so you might give that a try, for instance.

I'm not really sure about the "CFLAGS=-02" option you specified either. But I don't know the c89 compiler at all, which may explain my lack of understanding of the -02 compiler option.

Quote:

checking for working aclocal... missing
checking for working autoconf... missing
checking for working automake... missing
checking for working autoheader... missing
checking for working makeinfo... missing

You may want to try installing automake.

Quote:

apt-get install build-essential

I'm not familiar with apt-get package manager. But I think you need to specify which package it's supposed to retrieve (and install).
The package "build-essential" may not contain the tuxracer game, only some essential Linux programs.
In any case, the tuxracer game's home page (sourceforge) mentions that it is recommended to compile it from source, rather than installing a binary package. So "apt-get"ing it may not be the best way to start. Try making ./configure work first.

Hi robin,
Why aren't you using synaptic to install tuxracer directly ?
I'm not sure this game is still developped but i'm sure you'll find a package somewhere.
Game should be called planetpenguin-racer as far as i know and Synaptic will install all the necessary dependencies for you.

tuxracer game's home page (sourceforge) mentions that it is recommended to compile it from source

After that it says: "However, you may already use a distribution that includes Tux Racer binaries, so check to see if your distribution includes Tux Racer packages." It looks like there have been binaries available from the site but they have been removed because of problems with some RPM-based distros and the recommendation is to not use those binaries.

Quote:

configure: error: Your copy of glx.h is out of date. You can get a more recent copy from the latest Mesa distribution.

Heh, more likely it is too new. The last tuxracer release is over 5 years old.

I guess you haven't read the Ubuntu Documentation yet. In the Games section of the Start Guide , there are step-by-step instructions for installing planetpenguin-racer, which is a new project based on tuxracer. The Debian tutorial may also be useful, as Ubuntu is based on Debian.